" My father had wished me to
be confirmed at home rather than at school, and as Bishops did not
hold confirmations at such short intervals then as they do now, an
opportunity had only just occurred. Mr. Andrewes was preparing me, and
it was a great annoyance to him that his ill-health obliged him to go
away in the middle of his instructions. I think he was feverish that
night. Every now and then he spoke so rapidly that I could hardly
follow him. Then there were pauses in which he seemed lost, and abrupt
changes of subject, as if he could hardly control the order of his
thoughts. And in all the evident strain and anxiety to say everything
that he wished to say to me appeared that morbid fancy of its being
"the last time."
After we had talked for some time he said, "Life goes wonderfully
fast, Regie, though you may not think so just now. I do so well
remember being a child myself. I was eight years old, I think, when I
prayed for money enough to buy a _Fuchsia coccinea_ (they had not been
in England more than ten or twelve years then). My brother gave me
half-a-crown, and I got one. It seems as if that one yonder must be
it. I began a model of my father's house in card-board one winter,
too.
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